Ridley Pearson - No Witnesses

“Cross killer,” Danielson said. He knew all of Boldt’s cases. Knew them so well it bothered Boldt, it embarrassed him.

“Sometimes you get lucky.”

“You could have made captain in two years after that case,” Danielson observed, reminding Boldt of Liz’s arguments.

“But instead I took a leave of absence. That should tell you something.”

“You took two years . That’s hardly a leave.”

“My point exactly. The squad is yours. The shit-eating clearance rate is yours. Do with it what you will.”

“I don’t want it!” he complained, knowing there were others who would kill for it.

“Maybe that’s why it’s yours.” Danielson’s eyes registered disgust and contempt. “Someday you’ll thank me,” Boldt said.

Danielson hesitated and cautioned ominously, “Someday I’ll outrank you.”

“But may I remind you that you don’t today, Detective.” Boldt handed him an enormous stack of files and said, “Careful of your back. They’re heavy.”

Boldt spent the rest of his Saturday trying to shake the memories of Slater Lowry’s death and to organize the manpower and paperwork necessary to compare the Adler employee lists to the various other lists he had requested.

At 7:05 that evening, with the smell of egg rolls and ginger sweetening the air, Liz came out of the bathroom sobbing and carrying a long plastic tab with what looked like blue litmus paper glowing on its tip. That strip of plastic seemed strangely removed from the real world. It existed someplace that Boldt did not.

“I’m sorry,” he offered, gathering her in his arms. He swallowed away the lump in his throat and tried to think of something positive to say. Anything. But his voice remained silent. She pressed her face tightly into the crook of his neck, and he felt her shake. Her face was warm. Her breath blew hotly against his neck.

“I’m pregnant!” she informed him, sobbing, as it turned out, for joy. She waved the plastic strip like a flag announcing her motherhood. Boldt kissed her fingers. He kissed her forehead, her nose, and found her lips. She walked him awkwardly to the bedroom and nudged the door shut with her toe. Miles was lost in a set of wooden blocks.

“Maybe we should practice once, just to make sure,” Boldt suggested.

She said something into his ear but he didn’t understand it over the roar of his own heartbeat.

By the time they got to the egg rolls, they were cold and the fake beer was warming, but there were smiles all around. For these brief few minutes, Boldt forgot the Tin Man.

But not for long. He was working through his third report by the time he realized Liz had gone to bed. Interrupted by her crying, he saw the bedroom lights were out, and it quickly registered that these were clearly not tears of joy. As Boldt went in to comfort her, he wondered at the obsessed man he had become, and if he would ever be any different. “I’m here,” he whispered, sitting down beside her, laying a hand upon her back.

“I don’t think so,” she answered, her face aimed away from him. “But you were for a while.”

“I was for a while,” he agreed, though it pained him to do so. “It’s a start,” he tried, but they both knew it was not. They had been here before. They had never left.

“I’m scared.”

“Me too.” But for different reasons, he thought.

She fell asleep with silver tears still clinging to her reddened cheeks. And Boldt slept beside her that night, still dressed in his street clothes, snuggled in tight where the warmth of her filled him with an all-encompassing peace.

“This is the last time,” Owen Adler whispered in the dark, the bed and the houseboat shifting imperceptibly. On Sunday mornings, Lake Union was active early. Seaplanes and outboard engines competed noisily in the distance. “It really is. It has to be.” His voice was sad.

“I know.” Daphne rolled over, pressing her bare chest against his and curling onto him like a snake onto a branch, and kissed Owen wetly on the mouth. “I hate it,” she confessed. She knew that this time it was for real-with her being police, they could not risk violating the demands. Maybe, she told herself, it helped explain why the sex had been lifeless. Maybe it offered her a way for her to win access to his files.

She told him. “I would like to take a look at your files. The New Leaf contamination you told us about.”

“Tap will help you with that.”

She did not want to involve Howard Taplin, or any other Adler employee; she did not want any filters between her and the information. And besides, she thought, such involvement presented too great a risk. “The thing is,” she explained, “within your company Howard Taplin is as high-profile as you are. If he goes requesting a bunch of files, and the blackmailer is an insider, we take too big a risk that he or she might cotton on to police involvement. And I imagine that if Taplin gets a file himself rather than asking his secretary for it, that would raise as much suspicion.”

“Probably right.”

“And now that this person has proved what he’s capable of, I have no desire to test his threat of killing hundreds. We can’t afford any hint of our involvement in the investigation.” She allowed this to sink in and suggested, “I was thinking I could go in after hours. Nice and quiet. All alone, when no employees are around. Get what I need, make copies, and get out.”

“Whatever you want.” He held her tightly, and she could feel his fear in the embrace.

“I want it over,” she said.

A long time passed before he said, “You don’t expect something like this. And when it comes you wonder why you ever bothered with any of it. A month ago you and I were so close, and now I feel a distance in you-I feel your professionalism. Not that I’m complaining. You can’t believe what a relief it is to have you working on this, to have the police finally involved-despite the threats. I waited too long. I made mistakes-and I do not want to hear you blame yourself again-that’s not what I mean. Belief in my own instincts is what built this company. When those instincts fail you, it rattles the foundations.”

“Self-doubt is destructive. You can’t dwell on it.”

“You can’t help but dwell on it,” he said.

Wind whistled through the houseboat. Sometimes that noise sounded peaceful to her, but today it sounded ominous. She heard a light chop striking the pier, and in the distance the hum of traffic on the interstate. “Do you think it’s an employee?” she asked.

“I’m afraid it’s one. There’s a difference.” He added, “And it frosts me, because as cliched as it sounds, we’re a family, and this kind of betrayal is the worst kind imaginable. But the evidence certainly seems to point that way.”

“I think it’s connected to New Leaf-to these salmonella poisonings,” she told him. “That’s the psychologist speaking,” she said.

“I’d like to run away with you,” he confessed. “Leave it all. Wake up on some island and make love and drink beer.”

“You’d last about two days. When was the last time you took time off?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“You don’t know how to take time off.”

“You could teach me.”

She wormed her way fully atop him, and slid slowly against him until he was aroused. “We could teach each other,” she said.

“I’m a quick learner.” He kissed her, and she felt herself responding to him. There were times he made her body feel seventeen again, the way it reacted. Her desire had little to do with penetration or friction-she wanted inside his skin, she wanted some kind of union with his soul. It was a feeling she did not fully understand, and that somehow made it all the more attractive to her. Too often she understood too much.